Cioppino This Good Can’t Be a Cliché

SAN FRANCISCO — When Roseann Grimm was growing up, there was always a pot of long-simmered red sauce on the stove. Her grandfather Nicola DeSimone, a fisherman from Amalfi, Italy, used it to start a pan of cioppino, a seafood stew made with crab.

No, her grandfather’s cioppino didn’t involve bottles of Lefty O’Douls Bloody Mary Mix, or the soft, tongue-numbing sweetness of toasted star anise — she made those additions over time, at her restaurant,